Wine Chords

Palo Cortado with personality

Published 30. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was served in a panel tasting of dry sherries for Vinforum magazine.

Bodegas Ximénez-Spínola has since 1729 built its reputation on a single grape variety, namely pedro ximénez, that has always found itself in the shadow of palomino. The current proprietor is José Antonio Zarzana.

Their vineyards between the towns of Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María have chalky chalky albariza soils and are worked organically.

The wine is put together from single vintage casks from 2009, ’13, ’15 and ’19, blended together in 9 new barrels, matured for a year and then bottled. Fermentation was in French oak with wild yeasts, followed by ageing in American oak with some casks developing flor, whilst some not, giving complexity from both biological and oxidative ageing. There has been no fortification. Still it carries the DO Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, thanks to the new regulations from 2022. Alcoholic fermentation brought it up to15%, then an oxidative ageing and evaporation, resulted in a final 17%.

Palo Cortado Jerez Seco Serie 2 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Beautiful amber colour. Smells of apricot, candied fruits, and lightly fried onions. It’s full and glyceric, in a way fruity, with a saline touch, grapey, long with a nutty finish, and with perfectly integrated alcohol. A complex and generous wine, with lots of personality. Truly memorable.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Gorgeous Gorges

Published 23. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

The tasting of mature Muscadets in our local wine club slowed once again that the western Loire can produce perfectly balanced wines at very economic prices. This wine was among my favourites in the tasting.

The domain was founded by Michel Brégeon in the 1970’s and run today by Fred Lailler. Today Lailler disposes of 8.5 hectares of vineyards. Some are on gabbro soils, an old, blueish-green, igneous rock that imparts complexity, length, and an intense minerality to the wines. The Gorges cru is particularly known for this soil. All of the domaine’s vineyards are planted here.

The wine, from 70 years old vines, is aged on the lees in underground, glass-lined cuves for more than 2 years.

Gorges 2018 (Dom. Brégeon)

Light golden colour. Aroma of apples, saltwater and a touch of lime. Textured, with a stony minerality, a fresh acidity and good length. Well-balanced.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Proidl for patience

Published 16. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This Austrian wine was served at the Tempo wine bar in Sandnes, Norway last week.

Proidl proudly proclaim that the most important treatments in the processing of their wines are patience, tasting and observing. And this, they do in the Kremstal, Niederösterreich. Their ancestors emigrated from Germany, near Bremen, in 1650, and they have been making wine in Senftenberg since 1738.

Some keywords are spontaneous fermentation, moving the wines by force of gravity, stirring of the lees and long intervals of maturation sur lie. They have dispensed with any unnecessary additives, any frequent agitation, all pumps and, as they say on their website, “any hysterical filtration procedures”.

The grapes were harvested by hand at the beginning of September, gentle whole-cluster pressing, fermentation in stainless steel and subsequent maturing for three months on the lees.

Senftenberg Grüner Veltliner Freiheit 2022 (Proidl)

Light straw colour. Aroma of peach, lime, herbs and anise. Medium-bodied with good acidity and some white pepper. Good balance and quite uncomplicated drinking at a high level of quality.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Remarkable Ribeiro

Published 9. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I visited Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez back 15 years ago or so, and tasted the whole range. I remember well some impressive aged wines. From time to time one stumbles over his wines. This one I found in a shop in Murcia.

Luis concentrates on indigenous grape varieties like treixadura, brancellao and caiño. Today he works 6 hectares in Arnoia, in the DO Ribeiro, comprised of nearly 180 micro-parcels, located on southwestfacing, granitic hillsides. He utilizes native yeasts, low SO2, and practices élevage in steel tank, foudre and mostly used, larger French oak barrels.

The grapes varieties are treixadura, albariño, lado and torrontés. The soils are decomposit granite (called sábrego) with silicium, and the vines up to 25 years old. The grapes were hand-harvested, destemmed and fermented with native yeasts in steel vats, and raised for 10-12 months on lees before bottling with a light clarification (bentonite) and filtration.

Viña de Martín Os Pasás 2021 (Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez)

Light straw-coloured. Fresh aroma of citrus, herbs, quince and balsamic. Medium-bodied with fresh acidity and good power, and a salty mineral finish. The wine just is there, always, without hitting the headlines. But it’s just remarkable.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

A modern Arinto classic

Published 2. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I picked two bottles of this wine from my own cellar to enjoy at private dinners. In both cases it was served blind. It’s made by my good friend Pedro Marques, now a classic producer on the coast of Lisboa.

Marques’ wines come from organically farmed vines in the Lisboa region. The estate is located around eight km from the Atlantic Ocean, on limestone soils rich with fossils. The limestone content contributes to the freshness and saltiness in the wines.

The arinto grapes are spontaneously fermented on the lees at relatively high temperatures (around 18 degrees), as Pedro values texture and body in the wine. He uses barrels in the fermentation and the maturation process, to increase the complexity and make the wine less reductive. This matches well with the grape’s high natural acidity.

Arinto 2017 (Vale da Capucha)

Deep golden colour. Aroma of lemon peel, yellow tomatoes, pickled apricot and a touch of mature apples. Unctuous in the mouth, concentrated and packed with fruit, an acidity that gives it a special nerve, and a long, saline finish. A modern classic that speaks of its homeland near the sea.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Fresh Aire

Published 26. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

The last few days have been bakingly hot in Central Spain. So some freshness was needed. I finally got the opportunity to visit my friend Samuel Cano in Mota del Cuervo, Cuenta province. You can read about several of his wines elsewhere on the blog, such as here and here.

We visited La Tarancona vineyard. It sits on clay-calcareous soil at 800 meters elevation, and the vines have an average age of 70 years. The harvest was done at the end of September, after a rainy spring and a very long and hot summer. The grapes were destemmed and placed in a stainless steel tank, where it macerated for 5 days and began the alcoholic fermentation. It was then passed to a cement tank to finish fermenting and aged on the lees until bottling in March without filtration or stabilization.

Aire en el Patio La Tarancona 2023 (Vinos Patio)

Light golden colour. Yellow apples, mature lime, wax. Juicy with a light dryness, tasty, with a fresh acidity and a saline finish.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Tinácula from tinajas

Published 19. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I have just come back to Murcia after a few days in Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Las Calzadas in Pozoamargo, in the DO Ribera del Júcar.

Daniel Sevilla hosted me, with his girlfriend Raquel and his father José Julián. They showed me around their different vineyards, gave me a tasting of an excellent range of clay jars aged wines and even offered a delicious lunch with lechazo (young lamb), the local manchego cheese and so forth.

Moreover, this was also a trip down memory lane. Some years ago I visited José Miguel Jávega, who is the cousin of Daniel’s father. José Miguel was director of the Casa Gualda cooperative, that I happened to collaborate with at the time. He supported me this time via social media, and suggested that i gave this wine a try. So I did, and we also visited the same chapel as many years ago and saw the same old Roman roads, the Calzadas, that gave the name to this new company.

The wine is made exclusively with pardilla, a local low-yielding grape that has practically disappeared. I was more common in the Pozoamargo area before. Las Calzadas is involved in a recovery process for the variety. The soil is calcareous clay with a layer of rounded pebbles, typical of the banks of the Júcar river.

The grapes were destemmed and there was skin contact for 12 hours. After manual pressing it settled in a jar. The juice fermented in more than 100 years old clay jars, then aged 4 months on lees in the same jars. The wine was bottled without filtering or clarifying.

Tinácula Blanco 2023 (Las Calzadas)

Light golden colour. Deep and complex aroma of yellow apples, white flowers, wax and citrus peel. Unctuous in the mouth, creamy with good acidity and a saline finish.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Saravá’s Skin Contact

Published 12. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I have met Miguel Viseu and his wife Leli Dalla Costa several times at the Simplesmente Vinho fair. And I have also seen Miguel at Aphros, where he is winemaker. I tasted their whole range of inspiring wines earlier this year, and got the chance to re-taste two of them when they appeared in my local market. The label of this one reads only Saravá, but it’s the skin contact version, curtimenta in Portuguese, as opposed to the “normal” white loureiro.

The grapes are loureiro 70% and trajadura 30%, grown in the Lima valley. It had 5 months maceration on skins, mostly destemmed, with a short ageing in chestnut and clay.

Brazilian exclamation

Saravá 2022 (Galactic Wines)

Yellow colour. Aroma of citrus zest, white flowers and a mineral touch. Juicy looks the mouth, with a fresh acidity and a saline finish. A vibrant and balanced wine with careful skin contact.

Price: Medium

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Wine bars and restaurants and Wine of the Week

A Douro at Bar Douro

Published 5. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Last Thursday I popped into the Bar Douro (London Bridge) and had a few Portuguese wines. One of them was Folias de Baco‘s irresistible pét nat.

But first, Bar Douro opened in 2016 with the aim of bringing a piece of the authentic Portugal to London. Four years later another opened in the City. Max, the owner, is in fact in the family of Churchill’s port, and he spent his childhood days in Portugal. The whole staff takes pride in its passion for the country.

Michael, general manager, in front of a blue and white tiled wall

I have met and visited winemaker Tiago Sampaio several times. He is located near Alijó, one of the coolest places in the Douro. It’s him who runs Folias de Baco, and the family also have a wine bar of that name in Porto. Search the blog for more.

This wine is made with the old method, in French “méthode ancestrale”, means it is bottled with some amount of residual sugar left in the wine, so it can continue fermenting and producing carbon dioxide (which creates the bubbles). The yeasts give the natural cloudiness.

Uivo Pt Nat Branco 2022 (Folias de Baco)

Pale yellow colour, cloudy with discrete bubbles. Aroma of white flowers, peach and grapefruit. Medium bodied, lively and energetic, with a fresh acidity and a saline touch.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

Classy Californian at Tempo

Published 28. June 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine concluded a jazz club meeting with tasting at my local wine bar, called Tempo, after the famous bicycles that were once produced in the building.

Scar of the Sea is ru by Mikey and Gina Giugni in San Luis Obispo, California. They work with farmers who practise low-intervention in an attempt to make the viticulture as sustainable as possible. As they say, they want their wines “to tell a story of where they come from, the people who farm them, and reflect each vintage under the California sun.”

You have by now understood that they work organic, and ferment with native yeast. The wines see only a minimum of sulphur additions, and they are not fined or filtrated.

The Bassi Vineyard Pinot Noir is produced from around 25 year old vines on the hillsides of Avila Valley by the coast. It’s in transition to biodynamic certification. It was The fruit was fermented with 70% whole-cluster. The wine was pressed once dry in a wooden basket press then aged for 10 months in old French oak.

Bassi Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 (Scar of the Sea)

Ruby red. Fruity scent, aroma of raspberry and strawberry, white flowers and herbs. Fine tannins, good body and concentration, fresh acidity. A Californian with class.

Price: High

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